>>>>> "Olly" == Olly Betts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> It is certainly going to be useful. Nonetheless, I think we
>> should not hurry. The problem you are addressing is clearly much
>> broader than just C++, or even just for the compilers.
Olly> I personally need a solution to my current problem (which is
Olly> that I can't probe for a C++ compiler without aborting if one's
Olly> not found) fairly soon (in the next week say), but that doesn't
Olly> necessarily mean that autoconf need adopt it so soon.
Well, in that case, since the only occurrence of AC_MSG_ERROR in
AC_PROG_CXX is the one that bothers you, you can
pushdef([AC_MSG_ERROR],
[AC_MSG_RESULT([You don't have any C++ compiler, too bad])])
AC_PROG_CXX
popdef([AC_MSG_ERROR])
>> In fact, there is a rewriting of the AC_TRY which must happen, let
>> it be only for the quoting issues. I think it is also time to
>> provide something better than the weird AC_PATH_PROG,
>> AC_CHECK_PROG, AC_CHECK_TOOl and the like.
Olly> There are a lot of macros performing small variations of the
Olly> same task. It does look like it would benefit from being
Olly> replaced with a single macro with a clean, flexible interface.
Absolutely. Instead of having several variations, we just need one
big macros with all bells and whistles. Thanks to m4, this should not
change anything in the output.
BTW, I've always wanted to work as if we had `which' available: first
look up for all the candidates, then pick up the first one we like.
It sounds more like a penalty than anything else, but I expect two
benefits: some day, on the platform that really have a `which', I
suppose it will be more efficient than walking by hand with sh, and
second, on the weird platforms, such as DOS, I expect `which' to
handle part of the troubles (such as returning foo.exe for `which
foo').
Olly> Do you have a vision of what this might be, or do we need to sit
Olly> down and look at analyse exactly what each variant does?
IMHO, it should be something like PATH_PROG_WITH_TEST. In particular,
the fact that we reject some candidates (AC_PATH_PROG IIRC), is
nothing but a particular test.
Akim
